A recently issued twenty-year study on headaches suffered by the residents of Mentia investigated the possible therapeutic effect of consuming salicylates. Salicylates are members of the same chemical family as aspirin, a medicine used to treat headaches. Although many foods are naturally rich in salicylates, food-processing companies also add salicylates to foods as preservatives. The twenty-year study found a correlation between the rise in the commercial use of salicylates and a steady decline in the average number of headaches reported by study participants. At the time when the study concluded, food-processing companies had just discovered that salicylates can also be used as flavor additives for foods, and, as a result, many companies plan to do so. Based on these study results, some health experts predict that residents of Mentia will suffer even fewer headaches in the future.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the prediction and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the prediction.
The author assumes that the correlation between the increase in salicylates and the decrease in the number of headaches is sufficient proof that those two aspects are related. However, before we can conclude these assumptions, three questions need to be answered.
Is the decline in the average number of headaches similar to the average decline percentage of the headaches? The author assumes that just because the number of people experiencing headaches went down, the percentage of headaches declined as well. If there were near one hundred people in previous studies and fifty people in the most recent studies, obviously a decline in the numbers would be evident. For instance, an average with a population of two hundred partipants with one hundred of them experiencing occurring headaches would yield to a 50% headache rate within the population. However, if the most recent studies have only eighty particpants with seventy five participants experiencing such headaches, that would yield to nearly 94% of the particpants. As portrayed, the number is much lower, but the rate is much higher. In order to aver this stance that the average headaches indeed did decline, the comparion of the rise and decline in headaches need to be determined using percentages rather than numbers.
Furthermore, even if we used percentages over numbers, we are only testing a certain percentage of the population. Are these indivudals who are a part of the study a good representative group for the whole society that the companies are planning to distribute their products to? The group of these indivudals could possibly all be people who are unemployed and do not have the work stress contributing to the devolpment of headaches. They could be single men and women who do not have children to worry about. They could also all be children who may tend to get less headaches compared to adults. They could be married elder people who are used to the work stress in life and are not susceptible to headaches. In order to judge if the salicylates are the reason for the decline in headaches based on the study, we need to make sure that the study is a good representation of the society targeted for marketing.
Finally, considering that the study incorporated a good representation of the market, we still have another question to ask. Do these indivudals preclude other activities that might contribute to lessened headaches? For instance, how do we know that the individuals who reported with decreased headaches solely obtained that with this certain chemical. Perhaps they started to exercise regularly, eat healthier, or drink much more water. These factors contribute significantly to decreased headaches. In order to determine if salicylates are the sole contributors to decreased headaches, we need to determine whether or not the participants are doing external activities that contribute to mitigating headaches.
In conclusion, before the companies decide to initiate incorporating salicylates in their products for profits based on the assumption that this chemical mitigates headches, we need to ask those three important questions.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 502 350
No. of Characters: 2583 1500
No. of Different Words: 222 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.733 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.145 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.916 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 187 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 157 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 114 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 86 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.826 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.693 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.565 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.313 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.513 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.177 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 310, Rule ID: MAY_COULD_POSSIBLY[1]
Message: Use simply 'could'.
Suggestion: could
...ducts to? The group of these indivudals could possibly all be people who are unemployed and do...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 563, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun headaches is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...lso all be children who may tend to get less headaches compared to adults. They coul...
^^^^
Line 9, column 598, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
... get less headaches compared to adults. They could be married elder people who are u...
^^^^
Line 13, column 610, Rule ID: WHETHER[7]
Message: Perhaps you can shorten this phrase to just 'whether'. It is correct though if you mean 'regardless of whether'.
Suggestion: whether
...creased headaches, we need to determine whether or not the participants are doing external act...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, furthermore, however, if, may, so, still, well, for instance, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 38.0 28.8173652695 132% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 71.0 55.5748502994 128% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2656.0 2260.96107784 117% => OK
No of words: 502.0 441.139720559 114% => OK
Chars per words: 5.29083665339 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.7334296765 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.9982700313 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 226.0 204.123752495 111% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.450199203187 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 845.1 705.55239521 120% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 47.3729920743 57.8364921388 82% => OK
Chars per sentence: 115.47826087 119.503703932 97% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.8260869565 23.324526521 94% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.13043478261 5.70786347227 72% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.124310988634 0.218282227539 57% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0389459045861 0.0743258471296 52% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0231720163266 0.0701772020484 33% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0660362433707 0.128457276422 51% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0218782392273 0.0628817314937 35% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.4 14.3799401198 100% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.7 48.3550499002 86% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.4 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.08 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 108.0 98.500998004 110% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.